Volcom sponsored Demi Moore (right) with Kelly Slater ex Cam Diaz. Photo: Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
Volcom sponsored Demi Moore (right) with Kelly Slater ex Cam Diaz. Photo: Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

Legendary actress Demi Moore describes how surf scene in Charlie’s Angels film forced her to struggle with identity

"I had done ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and there was a lot of conversation around this scene in a bikini..."

The early 2000s were certainly a high water mark for surfing and surf culture. Andy Irons at his very peak, rattling off three straight Association of Surfing Professionals championships in a row thereby forcing Kelly Slater to return from his second of twenty-seven (and counting) retirements. Surf Magazines were relevant and staffed by real boys and girl. Surf brands were worth money, Hurley selling to shoe giant Nike for 95 million actual US dollars (160 mil in today’s numbers). And surf featured lovingly in films like Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu with guest appearance from the legendary Demi Moore.

Look at Diaz barrel.

Moore, reflecting on the times in a recent interview, declares that walking up the beach in a black bikini, apparently sponsored by Volcom, forced her to struggle with her identity.

“I had done ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and there was a lot of conversation around this scene in a bikini,” she told Interview Magazine, “and it was all very heightened, a lot of talk about how I looked. I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong,” the now 61-year-old clarified. “It’s more like I felt that feeling of, I’m not 20, I’m not 30, but I wasn’t yet what they perceived as a mother.”

Rude the containers women are put into, no? Pierce Brosnan never had to struggle with his identity while playing James Bond nor Clint Eastwood a variety of grumpy men.

Well, Moore seems to have landed on her feet, starring in a new sci-fi film that “follows Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) as she takes an experimental drug advertised to create a younger version of herself — a clone Sue (Margaret Qualley).”

There for it.

Load Comments

Surfer (pictured) in the long arm of the law. Photo: YouTube
Surfer (pictured) in the long arm of the law. Photo: YouTube

Second surfer gobbled up by law for protesting beach badges in New Jersey!

Outrage building...

The peace-loving surf community was rocked to its core, last week, when footage emerged of a surfer being violently thrown to the sand in Belmar, New Jersey after failing to provide police with his “beach badge.” According to the Shore News Network, “The practice of charging for beach access in New Jersey dates back to the 1920s, with towns using the revenue to fund beach maintenance, safety measures, and public services. Despite legal challenges, the New Jersey Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of these fees, which have become a fixture in nearly all coastal communities.”

Surfing’s “almost George Floyd moment” quickly went viral, BeachGrit’s Giancarlo Guardascione describing the scene thusly, “The surfer appears to be calm and following orders. What happens next is a move only Conor McGregor could appreciate. A rear-naked choke with enough force to wrangle a Montana bison, thrown down face first to the sand like a beach pylon. It takes six officers to lead the dangerous surfer away.”

Receiving much blowback, the Belmar Police blew right back, Chief Tina Scott stating rules were followed to the letter as the surfer “was not arrested for not having a beach badge. He was arrested because he obstructed the officer’s investigation by refusing to give his identification or pedigree information.”

And also not voluntarily placing his hands behind his back when told.

Well, the police sneer did not close the books on the issue as a second surfer has now been arrested, in protest, and a petition is circulating online demanding the whole “beach badge” business be dropped. The brave dissident sits at the high tide line and just waits for the law to come down upon him. They do, carrying up the sand like a large Buddha figurine to a somewhat embarrassing miniature beach vehicle.

Most importantly, where do you stand on the issue of public protest? Are you the sort to get arrested for the sake of principle or… not?

More as the story develops.

Load Comments

Stephanie Gilmore, Tom Curren and Mason Ho.
Stephanie Gilmore, Tom Curren and Mason Ho in new Vaughan Dead-Nick Pollet film Lazer Breathing Dragons.

Master filmmakers set to release hilarious Stephanie Gilmore-Mason Ho-Tom Curren epic!

Tom Curren brought only a quiver of high-performance surfboards made for Joao Chianca and was “hell-bent” to surf just like the frenetic Brazilian. 

It’s no secret I’ve lost several imperial gallons of transparent viscous goo on the comedic collaborations between Nick Pollet and Vaughan Blakey, two men with handsome glands and Herculean eggs. 

Together, Nick and Vaughan have collaborated on Postcards from Morgs – a film on the one-time world title contender Morgan Cibilic prior to his catastrophic failure to re-qualify for the tour and the explosively popular Free Scrubber whereupon Tom Curren is revealed to have a personality worth close examination.

Recently, their dollys-with-cocks animated film The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe (“More cock than a women’s college swim meet”) was panned by the race-obsessed, left-tilting propagandists, The New York Times. 

In roughly one month, their newest film, Lazer Breathing Dragons, a title inspired by a drawing by Vaughan’s son Milo when he was eight, will come online, and starring Stephanie Gilmore, Mason Ho and Tom Curren. 

What makes the movie so special, says Vaughan, is the trip through Indonesia, chasing waves through that storied archipelago, flying, driving, boats, coincided with all three “searching for what their purpose was in their lives.” 

Vaughan says a good example is Stephanie Gilmore “coming off the tour just as women’s surfing is going absolute bananas. She’s, like, fuck, what does that mean for me? Can I go back? But she’s absolutely frothing about being in that position. She’s not sweating it. Fuck, what a champion. It’s crazy you would feel that excited.”

Sixty-year-old Tom Curren, he says, brought only a quiver of high-performance surfboards made for Joao Chianca and was “hell-bent”, says Vaughan, to surf just like the frenetic Brazilian. 

“Tom goes, ‘I like how he’s here and then here there. I just wanna be able to go from here to here right now.’  No one would believe the most patient surfer in the world wants to surf like the most frenzied. He loved the instant nature of Joao’s A to B. There really is no space in between.”

Mason? Less searching, more prostrating before surf gods Curren and Gilmore. 

“When I asked him how does it feel surfing with Steph and Curren he said, ‘Well, it’s pretty much like hanging with God. Tom is God to me, Steph is like God to me. I just have to get in tune with what they’re trying to tell me with their surfing and be full disciple of that.” 

Lazer Breathing Dragons, cruelly short at twelve minutes, debuts in October. 

In the meantime, give Free Scrubber another run.

Load Comments

Rod Stewart’s old Malibu beach shack sells for $29.5 million after price slashed by almost half!

“I wanted the house to have the look of a giant wave at the peak of its strength,” said surfer-architect Harry Gesner.

A couple of years back, we lost a real gem when the surfer-architect and epic swordsman Harry Gesner got put in the dirt just three orbits short of his centenary.

They sure don’t make ‘em like Harry Gesner anymore, this former GI who stormed the beach at Normandy in 1944, constantly scudding along the precipice of death without quite tipping into the void, unlike innumerable pals. 

Last year, Harry Gesner’s Wave House in Malibu, which was built in 1957 and occasionally listed as an inspiration for the Sydney Opera House (Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s design for the iconic Sydney harbour build was submitted in 1957 and he later called Gesner to congratulate him on the joint), and which was owned at one point by electro-haired singer Rod Stewart, famous for pairing pink singlets beneath a suit blazer, went on the market for $49.5 million.

A bullish short price, sure, but the place is beyond epic. It wasn’t in the same price league as the two-hundred mill Beyonce and Jay-Z spent on their “cement monolith, designed by architect master Tadao Ando, home right up from First Point” but what you missed in lavish you got in soul. 

From a terrific profile on Harry Gesner in The Surfer’s Journal,

To get to the “soul of the site,” he’d surf the breaks in front of beachfront properties he was designing, giving him a perspective on the landscape and the area’s relationship with the ocean. During one of these “soul sessions” in northern Malibu in 1956, he sketched a design for a particularly wild and jazzy house with a grease pencil on the deck of his board. The result was his most celebrated creation, the world-famous Cooper Wave House built in 1957… The Cooper House especially pulls from an eclectic patchwork of design hooks—the buttressed beam framing of Notre Dame; Richard Neutra’s blurring of indoor and outdoor space; the fluid and refined lines of Frank Lloyd Wright; the space-age, B-movie psychedelia of Barbarella. Harry credits his style to a lack of formal training and to the improvisational skills he developed surfing. “I’m not sure my way of self education is the best for everyone,” he told me in 2007. “But I guess it speaks to originality and individuality.”

No bites at fifty mill so  the price was slashed by almost half and the joint has been now been scooped up by the venture capitalist Joshua Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his gal Victoria Secret’s model Karlie Kloss. 

Six beds, seven bathrooms, 6208 square feet built right there on the sand on Malibu.

“I wanted the house to have the look of a giant wave at the peak of its strength,” Gesner said.

The house’s former owner Rod Stewart, who turns eighty in January. is currently embroiled in a marriage “stalemate” after refusing a $74 million offer on his current residence, a modest palace in Los Angeles Ladera Heights, colloquially knowns as the “Black Beverly Hills”.

Rod Stewart, it’s said, reneged on a promise to return to the UK with this fifty-three-year-old wife Penny Lancaster who apparently loves that gloomy, rain-soaked island.

Load Comments

Surf sleuths go crazy trying to figure out which “wave rider” used for new Kamala Harris magazine cover!

Who is it??

Legit, who is it?

Carissa Moore?

Tyler Wright?

Caity Simms?

Help please.

Load Comments